Tractor and John Deere are almost interchangeable at this point due to how iconic the brand has become. In fact, John Deere has continued to shape the tractor industry and improve the popular machine for over 180 years. But without the man of the same name, the company would not exist today. So who was John Deere, the man behind the tractor brand that changed farming forever?

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Although tractors are typically associated with American farming culture, England was actually the first country to develop a tractor-like machine. A steam-powered stationary engine that powered a threshing machine emerged from a farm in Wales in 1798, and it took until the 1840s for both horse-drawn portable steam engines and self-propelled traction engines to appear. In America, agricultural contractor John Froelich introduced a steam-powered threshing machine in 1892 and soon added a chassis and wheels to carry the gasoline engine. This began the beginning of the Waterloo Gasoline Traction Engine Company in 1893. Unfortunately, the first few engines sold were immediately returned, causing Froelich to leave the company. Enter John Deere.

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John Deere is a name everyone knows today because of the state-of-the-art tractors produced by the company that bears his name. But before success, Deere had a few challenges to overcome.

Born in Rutland, Vermont, in 1804, Deere was raised by his mother after his father was lost at sea when he was four years old. He was a committed blacksmith all his life. He started working at just 17 years old, and after the New England economy collapsed in 1836, he eventually established a blacksmith shop in Illinois. He worked closely with farmers and learned about their problems with existing plows, such as soil sticking to the bottom of the plows and needing to be cleaned. must be scraped continuously. This led Deere to create a steel plow; Legend has it that Deere made it from a broken saw blade. Despite such a poor start, Deere’s steel plow business quickly became a huge success. In a short time, he started selling 1000 plows a year.

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Surprisingly, Deere ran the company alone from 1852 to 1858, when his son Charles Deere took over as manager during another period when the economy was at rock bottom. No stranger to devotion, the elder Deere was president of the Moline National Bank in Moline, Illinois, and was even mayor of the same town for two years. After his death, Charles took over the business completely as the business continued to grow. By 1877 the company was producing 500 plows a day.

John Deere is currently considered the best-selling tractor brand in the United States and around the world.

John Deere has designed and sold almost 700 tractor models since 1837. He is also trying to sell his own line of snowmobiles and bicycles. While these weren’t that big of a success, John Deere still made $1 billion in profits in 1998. This is considered to be the first time an agricultural equipment brand has achieved these figures. John Deere now controls more than 50% of the US large tractor market. Although tractor sales are down overall in 2024, John Deere is still at the forefront of the industry and may last longer. many other competitors over the years.

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There have been rumors for a while that John Deere might be looking. sell trucksbut the continued focus looks set to be his high end tractors and other agricultural equipment.